


When we get there

by Escapaeronaut



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Badass Rey, F/M, Ficlet, Kidnapping, Memory Loss, Panic Attacks, Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Reylo - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-24
Updated: 2019-02-24
Packaged: 2019-11-04 15:05:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17900399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Escapaeronaut/pseuds/Escapaeronaut
Summary: Kylo wakes up to find that Rey has kidnapped him. It might have been his idea, it might have been a feverish delusion.





	When we get there

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in one sitting, on my phone, on the train from St. Paul to Chicago. Beta'ed by me, sitting in Ogillvie waiting for a Metra home.

He drifts towards consciousness slowly. In his dream there is a plate of food in front of him, but his hands won't move to pick up the fork. He shifts he shoulders and the dream resets. More delicious food, but his arms won't lift from the arms of the chair. Others at the dream table are glaring at him, insulted that he won't eat. Finally, he shakes the sleep and wakes.

His hands are bound to the arms of the co-pilot's chair in an ancient ARC-170. But the bindings are just windings of winching cable, he gathers his intention and begins to use the force to break the thick wires.

“Don't” says the scavenger softly. He looks to the pilot's seat and she's holding a hypodermic injector. “Once again, your feet are bound, your saber is stored in a bin only accessible from outside the ship, I have my lightsaber, but I don't want to kill you, and I don't want to have to drug you a fourth time.”

“A fourth time?” 

“For someone who begged me to come get him, you sure fought me tooth and nail.” He frowns, why would he have begged her for anything? “You told me it would have to look like a kidnapping, but I thought once we were alone you would be grateful. Or at least we'll behaved.”

“When did I beg you for anything?” he spits out. “How long have I been unconscious? What the hell did you do?!” He strains against the wires, but doesn't use the force.

“Six days ago,” she shouts back “In our force bond, you were sick, delirious.” Her voice softens, “You told me how Snoke had abused you, how you thought Hux was planning a coup d'etat, you were hunting some artifact on a planet and had been bitten by something.” Kylo stared at the dash of the old ship, looking at the toggle switches, remembering the expedition to the Sith ruins. Hux was definitely planning a coup, he didn't doubt that.

“You gave me codes, to find and board the ship you would be going back to. Told me where in the ship to find you. Leia, Finn, Poe and I went back and forth for hours, was it a trap? Did you really want to be rescued? Were you worth the resources to rescue?” She stared at the tip of the injector, but didn't let it fall slack in her hand. 

“Everything went smoothly, to the First Order it looks like I busted through all their security with Jedi powers, drugged you, dragged you out, evaded detection, and slipped away without anyone but some unwatched cameras seeing.” He had stopped struggling, and just stared at her. “It was going great until you woke up from the drugs. Clearly you don't remember asking me for this, it must have just been the toxin. I just got lucky finding you alone in that hallway. Maybe Hux would order his troopers to let you get stolen away, but more likely, the plan really was that good.”

They stared at each other. He stared at her lips and flipped through his memories. “I remember the bite. Whatever bit me was small, but it was deep bite with slime all over it.”

“It's on your left ankle, the First Order droids patched it up pretty well.”

He clenches his jaw, “I think I remember seeing you, but I'm not sure if it was the bond or a fever dream. But it must not have been a dream, because here you are.” 

“Here I am,” she agrees, still pointing the injector at him.

“So, where are we going?” 

“Well, step one remains the same. You, me, a security droid with secure recording capabilities, and an intelligence officer on a far off asteroid for a debrief. That was going to be the holding pattern till we won. Then a military tribunal for war crimes.” 

“Till you won? You're sounding pretty confident there scavenger.”

“Well, I was pretty sure that the Supreme Leader was defecting and bringing a terabyte drive full of intelligence with him,” she said full of spite. Her nose twitched and she swallowed a few times before continuing softly, “You cried in my lap, Ben. The bond was open for hours, I took care of you. You probably would have died.” 

He clenches and unclenches his jaw. She reaches out quickly with her free hand, he flinches but her hand is empty. Her hand touches the top of his and her memories flood into his mind, and the dam holding back his breaks. 

He is on the dirty floor of a collapsed Sith temple. Rey has ripped pieces of his tunic off to get the worst of the toxic slime out of the wound. She's rinsed it and applied a bacta patch from his kit. He's talking, non-stop, about everything. He tells her everything she said he did. He tells her how amazing she is, how she is so much better than he is, she's kinder and stronger, she's beautiful. He feels his cheeks burning, but he can't tell if it's the memory of the fever of embarrassment at having told her those truthful things he suppresses. She holds him, rocking him as he babbles and sobs through his guilt.

She withdraws her hand, having shown him that again she has the upper hand. She slid into his mind more easily than Snoke had. He was her prisoner and he had already blown all his walls against her apart. His tendency towards self sabotage had rarely been so literal. He stares out at the streaks of hyperspace feeling like a shell of a man. If he had actually defected they were still going to charge him with war crimes, but he had only defected in a fever dream when Rey had shown him an ounce of human compassion. He was never going to see his mother. He turned his face away from her. 

“Ben,” she says his name again and it breaks him. He his rage and despair spill out and all he can do is turn his head away. If he had any control he could break his bonds and hide his face, or break the transparisteel windows and just kill them both. But he has no control left. 

“Ben, Ben, Ben,” she murmurs, taking his face in her hands, she's kneeling in front of him. “Shhhh, Ben.” He finally looks at her, but he can't stop his emotions, Snoke's training had taught him to channel his emotions, but he was too far gone now. “I know now, this isn't what you think wanted, but I came because I care about you. I came because some part of you that you keep deep down and tightly guarded, wanted to get away from the darkness.” He drops his face down, he can't look her in the face any longer. “Ben, Ben,” she kisses the crown of his head.

His tears stop, his breathing calms. Slowly, he raises his head to look at her. She gazes at him with such compassion he realizes in a rush, that is what was missing. There was no compassion with Snoke, certainly not with Hux. He had no reason to be worthy of her compassion, but there it was, plain on her face as she stroked his cheek. “It's not going to be easy, Ben. But I'll be with you for most of it. Leia does want to see you, when you're ready. She's missed you.”

“But, I fought you, you had to drug me again.” 

“That doesn't really change my plans, except for the winching cable.” 

“I'm not worth your compassion.”

“Rose told me we would win by saving what we love not not by fighting what we hate,” she hadn't taken her hands off his face, but a tear runs down her right cheek. “I'll unbind your wrists, and maybe your ankles.” She unwinds the cable from his left hand first and he puts his hand on her face, and wipes at the tear. 

“Rey, how long-” he chokes on his words. “When did you stop hating me?” 

She works on his right hand, a little smile on her lips. “After Ach-to. I couldn't keep hating you, but I couldn't have joined you on the Finalize. Even with Snoke gone.” Then his hands are free and Rey smiles at him. “Your path still isn't easy Ben, but truly, you are not alone, not anymore.” She moves away, back to the pilot's seat. “So here are your options, I can leave your feet bound, bind your wrists again when we arrive and I'll tell the intelligence officer that your begging to be rescued was fever induced. Or, we can agree that you had a bad reaction to the drug, probably due to the toxin from the bite. You woke up disoriented and I had to sedate you again. Eventually, you remembered that you did want to defect. And I let you undo the cables on your ankles.”

He looked at her, chewed his lip for a moment, and nodded. “I remember it all now, I'll cooperate, I want to defect, and most of all Rey, I don't want to fight you.” She nods at him, and he bends down to unwinds the cable. 

Once he gets it all off he sits back up. He's wrung out and his left bicep hurts. 

“Where did you get me with that injector?” he asks, rubbing his arm. 

“Right there,” she says with a tight smile, “Both times.”

“I can't say I didn't deserve it.” He stretches, stiff from all the sitting. But there is something under his tunic, on a chain around his neck. “Did you put this on me?” He says to Rey as he pulls out the item. 

It's a data drive. She stares at him. Quickly he pulls it over his head and hands it to her. She stabs it into a port that has clearly been updated recently. The ship is much too old to have this more recent tech, and it stands out. On the screens in front of them both show the files on the drive. It's the intelligence he had promised her. She turns to him, “Ben!”

He slides out of his seat, shuffles over to her on his knees. She turns her chair towards him and he puts his head in her lap.

“Rey, Rey, oh Rey, please.”

“Shh, shh,” she smooths his hair. “It's okay Ben, I forgive you.”

**Author's Note:**

> This is fiction. You do not have to be as perfectly forgiving as Rey. She is pretty literally a saint here. Or maybe a Bodhisattva.


End file.
